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The 9th Age

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Fantasy Battles: The 9th Age is an independent table top miniature wargame set in a fantasy world, in which players take control of armies and set them upon one another in conflicts ranging from minor skirmishes to mighty battles with hundreds of models.

The game and all of its rules are completely free to download and use, and consist of a main rulebook and over fifteen army documents, ranging from stoic men and noble elves to the feral orcs and dread worshipers of the dark gods. You can easily assemble your own army using appropriate 28mm miniatures from any manufacturer.

Fantasy Battles: The 9th Age has been created by a group of experienced wargamers, a large supportive staff and continuous input from the wargaming community. We aim to provide a competitive, balanced and fun game, with updates and new rules to be released regularly.

We’ve created 16 unique armies from the Dread Elves in the west to the Ogre Khans in the east. Each army has different units and playstyles and can be represented by models from any 28mm model company. People said it was impossible, but we have created a game that is both balanced and fun. Don’t believe us? Try it for yourselves.

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I had been ahead going into round 3, so with a 20 pt win I was in first place and won the tourney

I was a bit surprised with this outcome, but I think I got lucky on match ups.

Game 1 was a really bad match up for my opponent.

I was actually hoping for a 12-15 in Game 2, I thought that was a fairly good match up for me.

Game 3 I think I was better positioned against his magic than most opponents but the caimans and poison skink block were good counters for my AD, the result in Game 3 came down to deployment and dice.

Overall a really great way to spend a Saturday, I had a great time and had fun with a bit of an atypical single tourney list

Thoughts on the List:
I’ll go through unit by unit and give my thoughts, with the looming hotfix it will be interesting to see what happens:

AD: Having played 5 games with the AD in 2.0 now I’ve had the following data points/takeaways:

The MoCT is absolutely critical to make the AD playable. In 3 out of 5 games the AD would have died without the healing from the MoCT. I’m not sure if the cosmology master can achieve the same outcome with Touch the Heart and Hereditary combo keeping the AD alive, but then I’d be without a BSB

I didn’t invest very heavily in the damage output of the rider, but the damage output on the AD overall underwhelmed generally. I think I need to invest in either rod of battle and/or a better weapon set up on this guy. His damage output is nowhere near as reliable as the other big bads out there, ex. scourge of wrath

I’ve got at least one perfect example of the huge base’s impact, and I’m sure if I’d faced more cannons I would have more examples. I think the march rate increase this model saw was a good add but this base is a clear cut cost in the upgrade from dragon to AD, the upgrade needs to be repriced.

MoCT: I’ve used this model in 9 out of 10 games in 2.0 BETA, but I used it in 90%+ of my games in 1.3, so I’m a long-term believer.

I really love the flexibility of the magic phase, but the MoCT struggles as a solo caster, the lack of magic missiles makes early phases a bit bleh. If it’s a solo caster it requires the magical heirloom as a bare minimum to make it functional, which means the model is no longer a viable combat character as it can’t be properly defended with only 60 pts of enchantment allowance left.

I think in its current iteration it could be considered too cheap. I think a 20-40 pt cost increase would be appropriate.

I’m working on lists that combine the MoCT with another caster so that I can put more pressure on in early magic phases

Flame Wardens w Rending Banner: I haven’t changed my build on these guys since 8th edition, the rending banner makes them a good all-around unit. I really made an effort to NOT overestimate these guys during this tournament and it paid off as I didn’t lose them even once.

I can see the combo of the hereditary on Flame Wardens as being really frustrating for opponents. I’m not supportive of the multi-layer nerfs to the hereditary that have been forecast but this particular unit has enormous synergy with the hereditary in its current form.

Lion Guard w Navigator’s Banner: This was actually my first time trying out this unit, I think it’s fairly good but at the end of the day they are just t3 elves. They really need the distracting banner and the MoCT to keep them alive. They went down in one game, pretty much went down in another. I do like the threat they bring to a lot of scary units (knights, monsters, etc) but they have some super hard match ups (anything with parry, lots of other elves, horde armies) so they’re not all-comers like some suggest. I’d like to work a foot prince into my list to take advantage of stubborn.

GW: These guys look better on paper than they actually are on the board. They’re super expensive and your opponent has to have relevant targets for them. That said, they’re great against lots of hard counters to the AD and they can occasionally come up huge like in game 3 with the -1 to hit on the caimans. Swingy choice, but I see myself using them in any dragon list.

Shooting Units: I thought I’d finally found the sweet spot for shooting. As any who follow my blog know, I don’t like to take a lot of shooting but I have struggled to find the goldilocks point (not too much not too little). The combo of a decent amount of shooting from core and the SGRs was enough to help me win the chaff war and put shooting pressure on opponents with little shooting. I’ll need to think about this build now as the loss of becalming banner in core definitely changes the calculus on the archer unit.

Lancers: I really struggle with Lancers, the block of 10 is unwieldy and doesn’t usually earn its points back. The darts of 5 really don’t belong in any combats and I found myself using them as expensive chaff sometimes. That being said, I didn’t find myself in a place where I needed the champ dart mechanic with the AD so they didn’t have an opportunity to fully fit their role.… [Read More]

Just want to take the time to provide a quick update to explain our slower release of content over the past few months.

Obviously over the holiday period we were all fairly busy and have been waiting to get back on track since the start of the new year. We also provide a Warhmmer 40k podcast every 2 weeks (interchanging with the 9th age cast) and due to club events this has taken a front row seat in our releases.

We appreciate the patience of you that enjoy (or tolerate) the ramblings of some lower tier players, we aim to provide a different outlook on the 9th Age to some of our bigger brother podcasts. Our club consists of active and competitive players but we do not hold the coveted top spots in the rankings so we appreciate that our insight might not be what you are looking for if you are trying to break the current UK meta.

The main reason for this blog update is just to let you know that we are still here and will still be releasing 9th Age podcasts. We have recently gained sponsorship from our local gaming haven Firestorm Games (The South Wales Gaming Centre) and have been able to reinvest into the podcast we love doing.

Starting Monday 19th February (Episode 16k of our 40k series) we are able to offer giveaway prizes that will hopefully end with you 9th Age lovers having a chance at some sweet fantasy models to use on your table top.

We have also invested in some new equipment, addressing some of the quality issues we had in previous episodes (this is only for the main hosts i'm afraid! Guests are stuck dealing with their own audio for now!)

We hope to hear from you all over the next year, please send any questions and comments to Podcast@Valerenegades.com and leave us a review on iTunes, Twitter (@RenegadesRamble) or any android podcast service you use!

Recent Activities

defensive magic? oh dude, go play VC for that, you are elves, you are suposed to have weakneses.
What I dont get is... why do HBE have acces to divination then? just because it fits with ligth and good guys?

Quote from Bugman: “I do have a question though which I would like people to think about before answering. I also don’t want it answered based on the anger that came with the recent update:
Question is:
What should the project do if it doesn’t…

Quote from Konrad von Richtmark: “Also, there is definitely quite a significant amount of entitlement behind the outrage. Community feedback is seen not just as information that's meant to help the project members do their jobs, but as actually having…

Quote from ArchangelusM: “And the claims of the project to rest on data and then do stuff in exact opposite of that (e.g. decisions without or even contrary to available data).
”
This part is especially frustrating to me. I remember back in 1.1 when the …

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Quote from saint_barbara: “Quote from ArchangelusM: “Quote from saint_barbara: “@CalcathinHbE should never have any protective spells in the first place. They already have amazing statline, great buffing potential and their only…

Quote from Konrad von Richtmark: “Also, there is definitely quite a significant amount of entitlement behind the outrage. Community feedback is seen not just as information that's meant to help the project members do their jobs, but as actually having…

Quote from The Changing Constant: “Quote from ArchangelusM: “Quote from saint_barbara: “@CalcathinHbE should never have any protective spells in the first place. They already have amazing statline, great buffing potential and their only weakness was the…

Quote from saint_barbara: “@CalcathinHbE should never have any protective spells in the first place. They already have amazing statline, great buffing potential and their only weakness was the Res3.
This is what ASAW table is for.
”
Errrrrrr,…

The only good thing I can take out of this hotnerf is the fact that they didn't touch "The Conclave" (Thank God!).
This game changing rule is there since the introduction of the Divination lore. It is so important that is hasn't even received its own…

Quote from shakedown47: “My only 9th Age requirement: keep it better than Kings of War, and I'll keep playing.
Thankfully, that sets the bar really low.
Looking forward to March. That's one thing I'll say for T9A, I really enjoy the anticipation of…

Quote from echoctrl: “There are no magic weapon options available to unit champions in any other unit entry across the rest of The 9th Age. That was the reasoning given.
”
So I guess like everything else when it comes to this project then -…